Twenty April 1998 #2
“So you’re not?”
“Aliet. I would love to be your dad, I would be the proudest person in the world, and I tried to take a little of that on when your mother passed.”
“But?” I said.
“I’m not your father. Your mom and me, we weren’t like that. We were just best friends.”
“But I have your eyes.”
“You have someone’s eyes, but they aren’t mine, sweet pea.”
Hearing him call me sweet pea at my age nearly made me break down right there. I half expected him to reach into his pocket and pull out a penny.
“Do you know who my father is?”
I wasn’t trying to catch him in a lie, I just wasn’t sure how to say what I needed to say.
On the one hand, I wanted to know, and on the other, the thought that it was Kenneth who told me still made me so angry.
I didn’t understand why the people I loved had kept the truth from me for so long and were willing to take it to the grave instead of just telling me.
“I do.” He took a deep breath, pulled in his line and cast it again before he spoke. “I promised your Kiju that I would never tell you, but she’s not sitting here with you beside me. Why now? Why haven’t you asked before now?”
“I assumed that the people I loved would never lie to me.” I said it with a coldness I didn’t know I could muster.
“That’s fair.”
Ben was quiet so long I was beginning to think he didn’t hear me. Then he said it.
“Reg. Kenneth’s father. He’s the man who . . .”
In that moment, I realized I wanted so bad for it to be a lie.
For Kenneth to be saying something hurtful but untrue.
Yet here I was, hearing it from the person I trusted most in the entire world.
I wanted to be sick. I handed my rod to Ben and tried to put my head between my knees, my pregnant belly in the way.
I took a few deep breaths of salty air, then sat up straight.
Ben handed a mug of coffee to me, the fishing rods stuck in between the planks of the wharf.
My shaky hands took the cup, but I could not look at him.
“Did she love him?”
“No, Aliet, she did not. He was a cruel man and a violent one. That’s why we never wanted you to know.” He trailed off.
“Tell me what happened.” Off in the distance I could see the fog crawling along the surface of the water.
“Your mother was fifteen and— God, why am I the one left with this burden?” He stopped to collect himself.
I still refused to look at him.
“Your mother was not a willing participant in your conception.”
The clinical way he said it did nothing to soften the blow. Ben reached over and set his hand on my knee as I began to cry.
“Your grandmother never wanted to tell you. She thought it might be harmful for you to know.”
“So, my mother didn’t want me?”
“Don’t go there, girl. Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself.
You were loved from the moment you were born.
You may have been made in violence, but from the minute your mother found out she was carrying you, she let that go.
She was the bravest person I have ever known and will ever know, and I won’t have you insulting her memory like that.
She was full up with love for you from the very start.
She chose love. It might not have been right for everyone, given the circumstances, but Maggie was her own woman and she loved you from the start. ”
“Sorry,” I said under my breath, but just loud enough to be heard.
I wiped my tears. The fog was getting closer. The air had chilled and the light from the rising sun was muted.
“So, my father isn’t the red-headed man with no thumb that used to buy our baskets?” The tension between us broke and I turned to face him.
“Jesus, where did you get that from?”
“Kenneth used to tell me all the time.”
“That boy was an idiot.”
“You know he’s still alive?”
“I didn’t. Last I heard, he was in jail.”
“He’s out. He came to my house last month.”
“He did what?”
“Came to apologize and tell me about his father—our father.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the photo of my mother and handed it to Ben. “And he gave me this.”
He took it from me and looked at it a long time.
“She was always so happy. I’ve never seen this picture before, but it’s a perfect one of her.” He handed it back to me. “So, you knew?”
“I didn’t want it to be true, but I knew you would tell me if he was lying.”
“We did it for you. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do, but it was hard. After she died, we wanted to make sure you were surrounded by the love she couldn’t give. Maybe it was wrong to keep it from you, but after Kiju died, I just didn’t know.”
“Does Sally know?”
“It’s the only secret I ever kept from her.”
Just then, something pulled my line and the rod nearly got loose from the boards.
I reached out and grabbed it before I lost it to the water.
I held on tight as Ben encouraged me. I pulled the fish, its body flapping on the wooden planks of the wharf.
It was the first of many we caught that morning and that Sally fried up for supper with some scalloped potatoes and fresh sauerkraut.
I stayed another night, sleeping under the billowing lace curtains with Bingo at my feet.
I felt lighter knowing that Big Ben would have claimed me, just as Kiju had said.
Lighter knowing that my mother had made the choice of love over hate, even in the worst of circumstances.
And I thought, if she could do that, maybe I could do the same.